Next month, bring us your stitch marker tips and tricks. Don’t forget, Anna, our Tip Czar, welcomes you to demonstrate a tip or just share the idea for her to present to the guild. 

We welcomed back our first ever speaker this month, Michele Bernstein, a.k.a. PDXKnitterati. She started off her lecture on blocking with a poll. 39% of the audience said they always block, 34% said they usually block, 19% said sometimes, 7% said never, and 4% said “What’s blocking?” Even Michele had to be convinced to block and she presented three cases of sweater care gone awry. 

Blocking is the process of treating your knit or crocheted item with moisture and shaping. You can do this by steaming, or washing and air drying, usually flat, in the desired shape. Blocking allows wool and silk fibers to bloom, cotton and linen fibers to soften, and stitches to even out and set into the fabric you created. It is especially important in opening up lacework and for colorwork and cables to truly shine. Some tips for the process:

• Treat a sweater swatch as you will the finished sweater. I.E. don’t stretch the swatch to the extreme if you don’t want to do that every time you wash your sweater. Base your gauge on the blocked swatch.
• Clipping your ends after you block helps keep them hiding in the back.
• Block hats flat, or on bowls, balloons or even plates for special shaping.
• Don’t block the ribbing on sweater pieces, to keep its stretchy nature.
• If your item is drying too quickly for you to get it wired and pinned in place, use a squirt bottle to re-moisten.
• Just because the yarn label says you can put it in the dryer, doesn’t mean you should! Again, experiment on a swatch, not your finished object.

Thanks, Michele, for a great presentation!

We were happy that again several people sent in pictures of their finished projects for the virtual show and tell.

​Enjoy knitting weather until we see each other again. ​

Next month, the theme is all things cables. Do you have tips on how to work with cable charts, how to remember the twists, even tools you love to help? Send them to Anna and she’ll work her ma​gic to teach us all something new.

​Our speaker this month was Renate Yerkes, a.k.a. Elphino PDX, who spoke with us a year and a half ago on double knitting. This time she presented the history and style of Selbu mittens. After separating from Sweden in 1905, the Norwegians sought a national identity and used knitting to help them find it. The Selbu mittens became part of their national image after a young girl in Selbu, Norway wore a pair to church featuring the selburose, or eight-pointed rose. Everyone wanted a pair of the striking two color, lush mittens. By the 1930s, Norweigans were knitting 100,000 pairs every year exporting them to surrounding countries. Standards were set to maintain the traditional styling through proportions and the geometry underneath the many motifs.

The mittens offer several areas to customize the design. The cuff can be ribbed for winter sports or lacy for a bride’s trousseau. The top of the hand usually has a larger scale motif, while the  palm generally has a smaller scale repetitive motif. Both sides of the thumb can be different, the underside often bearing initials of a newly wed couple or a family emblem. 

Renate’s favorite needle size for knitting Selbu mittens is a 2.75-3 mm needle, typically she favors ADDI flexiflips for ease of turning the tight corner on each side. A great question was posed about the floats on the inside of the mittens snagging on rings, but Renate said the floats are short and with the thinner yarn and dense fabric created, it isn’t usually a problem. Who else immediately started hunting patterns and yarn to make themselves a pair?

We are thrilled that every month members come forward with wonderful pictures enabling us to keep up with the virtual show and tell.

​Lorilee Beltman joined us from Seattle to present her technique, vertical stranded colorwork, for Puddletown’s first ever hands-on lesson. This style has been her personal knitting playground since 2008. First, she gave us a tour of her studio and showed us samples of vertical stranded colorwork (VSC). 

Unlike other colorwork such as fair isle or mosaic, the contrast color in VSC only exists in that one column of the knitting. It’s an easy way to modify seed stitch or garter stitch to give a pattern your very own flare without losing much stretch. Lorilee focused on cables with us in the hands-on tutorial of her presentation. She was a great teacher, allowing time for us to practice and demonstrating for three different styles of knitting. The main thing to keep in mind was the main color leads and the contrast follows. Also, take the time in the beginning to manage the spaghetti of contrast colors with butterfly knots or chip clips. 

by Kimberly Williams

Another month, another virtual meeting. It just isn’t the same as seeing your faces, but at least we can be in our jammies.
 
Our first round of stuffed animals was sent to Butterfly Boxes. Adrienne Enriquez updated us on the refugee situation in Portland. As very few refugees are arriving in Portland currently, Butterfly Boxes reached out to their partners to have the stuffed animals delivered to children in families with a member suffering from COVID-19. Keep knitting, crocheting, and sewing stuffed animals. This world needs more love right now. And remember, you can knit clothes for store bought stuffed animals, too.
 
This month Kim Winter filled in for Anna to present member tips. The theme this time was non-knitting tools we use for knitting. There were some good ones. From photo boxes and zippered bags for needle organizing to rubber bands for needle stoppers. We also saw medication organizers for notion storage and stretchy rubber tourniquet material for gripping needles. Any cylinder in your house will work to start winding a ball of yarn. If you like to snack while knitting, use chopsticks or small tongs to grab those Cheetos to keep your fingers and your projects clean. What about a salad spinner to get the excess water out of your washed garments before blocking. It’s hard to pick a favorite of this lot, but I think mine was the needle buddy made of a swatch pinned to your chair for easy storage of your working DPN or crochet hook.

Next month's member tip theme: how to prevent twisting when joining in the round. I can’t wait to see what ingenious ideas you all have.

Mary Mortensen stayed up late and joined us via Zoom from Kansas. Her presentation was all about steeking as well as some of the history of stranded colorwork. Stranded knitting is knitting with at least two colors on a single row where the yarn not in use strands or floats across the back of the work. These strands add a layer of warmth which was highly valued in the northern climates where the technique originated. Fair Isle is a type of stranded knitting using multiple colors made popular by a 1921 portrait of Britain’s King Edward VII sporting a Fair Isle sweater.
 
The intricate patterns created by stranded knitting are easiest when knit in the round and without breaking for arm holes. That’s where a steek is needed. A steek is the bridge of stitches added to the work that allow an opening to be cut without interrupting the stranded colorwork. Mary showed us several examples of these steeks. Steeking is often referred to as the process of actually cutting the knitting.
 
Mary shared many ways to reinforce the edges after you make the cut. Wool is naturally sticky making it a good choice for projects requiring steeking. For other fibers, you can reinforce the edges with a double line of machine sewing or hand sewing. Make sure you pierce the yarn and don’t go between the knit stitches. You can also crochet a line on either side of the column to be cut or even use needle felting techniques.
 
If you are steeking to make a cardigan, you will probably be adding a button band or some kind of edge after you cut the steek. To finish the inside edge, you can sew on bias edging to cover the raw edge. You can pick up stitches along the raw edge and knit a facing that you then tack down.
 
Other tips from Mary included being consistent in how you hold the yarn; the direction the yarn comes from will determine which color dominates; and that your gauge in stranded colorwork will most likely be different from single color stockinette. If your project includes stranded and single colorwork, you should check for the last tip and possibly change needle sizes to keep the gauge even. To achieve a smooth finished piece, avoid puckering by using less slippery wooden needles, or turn your knitting inside out as you knit to give your strands further to travel.
 
For first timers, find a smaller project with only two colors with short floats and short pattern repeats. Think hats or sweaters with the colorwork only in the yoke. And don’t try to add a steek to your first stranded colorwork project. Check out this great group on Ravelry for more tips and a collection of free patterns. Here's a list of other resources from Mary.

Mary did a fabulous job of explaining a difficult technique that would be so much easier in person. Thanks for taking on that challenge! 

​​Once again several people sent in pictures of their finished projects for the virtual show and tell. 

​Want to watch the meeting? Click here.

The raffle is back! Our board members have been hard at work in the last month to bring the raffle to our virtual meetings. And it was a success! Three lucky people will be receiving their prizes in the days to come. 

On a serious note, the past weeks have been difficult as well as inspiring. When we formed this guild three years ago, our main mission was to create a diverse community of knitters. Now the board enhances that vision by committing our organization to being an anti-racist community of fiber artists. Please join us in the hard work ahead.

​Check out and support BIPOC makers, designers, and dyers. Below are just a few of the many talented Black members of the fiber community.

​Kathryn Gearheard updated us on our sister guild, the Brave Girls Knitting Guild. In her previous visits, Kathryn taught the members to knit using straight needles and they showed no sign of interest in circular needles. However, as they delve into the realm of baby sweaters, they have joined Team Circular. When the world opens back up again, we will host a circular needle drive to add to the straight needles we have already collected. It is inspiring to see the Brave Girls using knitting as a marketable skill rather than just as a hobby.

Anna knocked it out of the park again with our member tip. This week she showed us a new way to count rows and how to place a running stitch marker using a darning needle and contrasting yarn. To count rows, run a needle up through a column of knitting and gently separate. Count the bars revealed to get your row count. Oh boy, does this change my knitting world! And then, Anna took it even further by showing us how to keep track of those rows. Check out the video to see how she does it. This technique can help track increases, decreases, and the length of the work. Not to mention motivate you on neverending stretches of sweaters or socks.

Capitalizing on our virtual meetings, we went all the way to Kansas City to bring you Cheryl Murray’s presentation on casting on and binding off. She is a teacher of 15 years, designer, member of the Sunflower Knitting Guild, frequent customer of Yarn Barn, and known as Prairieknits on Ravelry, Twitter, and Instagram.

We all have our tried and true method we prefer to cast on and bind off. However, if a designer calls for a specific cast on method, Cheryl says there is probably a reason, for example, a particular look or desired stretchiness. You may also want to try a different method to achieve a decorative feature or use a provisional method to keep live stitches to add something extra later. 

There’s no way Cheryl could cover all the numerous methods, so she outlined some problems with the standard long tail cast on and some tips to overcome them. First, long tail cast on needs a tail, right? But how much? I have definitely cast on a whole lot of stitches only to run out of yarn at the last few required. I have also started over when I ended up with way too much tail that I couldn’t stand to leave and waste that yarn. Yep, even started over when the cast on number was multiple hundreds. Cheryl, thank goodness, gave us some rules of thumb to guesstimate the length of tail. If your finished dimension is 20”, multiple 20 times 3 to get the length of tail you need. Or allow 1” for every stitch e.g. 40st = 40” (these tricks usually work for worsted weight).  Or wrap the yarn around your needle 10 times, then measure the length. If it is really important, cast on 10 stitches, then pull them out and measure the length. 

Next, Cheryl addressed the issue of long tail cast ons being too tight, either to knit into or as a finished edge. Use a finger on your left needle to eyeball and mark the spacing between cast on stitches. You can cast on using a larger needle but that doesn’t always work. She advises practicing until you cast on properly. Remember, hug your needle with the yarn, don’t strangle it. I thought that was a great way to focus my cast on energy. 

The last issue Cheryl discussed was the reversibility of the long tail cast on. Typically it is not a reversible method. Meaning, the long tail cast on makes a row of knitting. If you turn and start working your right side row, that cast on row is the opposite of what it should be. Some patterns fix this by adding a purl row before the pattern starts. If it doesn’t, you can add one in, but double check it doesn’t mess up counts. Or cast on purlwise. All you do is reverse the order of the knitwise long tail cast on.  You can even cast on in pattern which is great for ribbing which gives the edge a little extra stretch.

Cheryl also demonstrated the Estonian method with the optional double yarn start for an even more decorative edge. And lastly was the Twisted German cast on, also known as the German Long Tail cast on, and also as the Old Norwegian cast on. 

As too tight bind offs are a common problem, Cheryl covered a few ways to help. If you need just a little extra stretch, try the Suspended bind off. This method basically prevents you from pulling too tight. The Elastic bind off is also good for just a bit more stretch. If you need to stretch the edge to the extreme for a lace shawl, try the yarn over method or Russian Lace bind off. So much great information here and in her handout. Thanks, Cheryl. 

Cheryl recommended these two books: Cast On, Bind Off: 211 Ways to Begin and End Your Knitting and Cast On, Bind Off: 54 Step-by-Step Methods

May’s virtual meeting presentations started with Anna sharing tips on how to keep track of what sized needle was used for a gauge swatch.
Method 1: add a series of yarn overs to a row of the swatch. For example, if you are knitting with size 5 needles, you would add 5 yarn overs with their corresponding K2TOG (YO, K2TOG, YO, K2TOG, YO, K2TOG, YO, K2TOG, YO, K2TOG).
Method 2: add knots to a tail to equal the needle size.
Method 3: add a numbered bead to a removable stitch marker. This last is my personal favorite, as I love an excuse to buy beads.​

Click images below to see examples.

Our speaker for the month was Luigi Boccia, co-owner and operations manager of Brooklyn Tweed. He took us through the process of launching a new yarn and gave us an exclusive preview of their next yarn, Dapple. After 10 years of focusing on growing a business and maintaining their goal of sustainably sourced and milled yarn from the U.S., they were ready to challenge themselves and create something a bit more playful. 

Dapple blends cotton, a renewable, sustainable fiber, with Merino wool. The wool comes from a Colorado ranch owned by a scientist focusing on improving the genetics of the herd. This business relationship had already been established. Finding a cotton farm that met Brooklyn Tweed’s high standards was the first challenge. They learned about a Texas organic cotton farm while watching the documentary The True Cost. That farm turned out to be a perfect fit.

The next big challenge was how to dye the fibers. Wool and cotton take color differently. Cotton provides an additional challenge as it takes color sporadically. You could dye each separately and then mix them together, trying for an exact match. Or you can achieve a marled effect with 2 different colors. Or as their mill suggested, you can dye the fibers together with a dye developed for one of the fibers and produce a faded effect normally produced through a hand-dyed method. And thus was born the first line of Brooklyn Tweed with no two skeins alike. 

Luigi’s excitement for the whimsy in Dapple was obvious. He encourages sweater knitters to be experimental with skein placement to get the best variation. Dapple’s playful nature is set apart from Brooklyn Tweed’s other lines’ classic and timeless colors. 

For me, the most interesting thing was learning about why they release only a few colors with each new line. The smaller palettes help local yarn shops adjust their space to new inventory. Too many choices can also overwhelm knitters already excited by a new yarn. Which of us hasn’t stood, mesmerized and drooling over a newly discovered yarn?

Now we will all hold our breath until Dapple is released on July 15th with two new patterns by Jared Flood.

Thank you, Luigi, for our sneak peek!  

We wrapped up with a virtual show and tell. Our knitters have been productive and have created some beautiful things. ​

Despite being virtual, we still wanted to do a show and tell. We asked the community to mail in their projects, and finished off the meeting with the below.

Exciting news for our guild. We are now sister guild to the Brave Girls, a group of new knitters in Rwanda and Uganda. Next month, Kathryn Gearheard, teacher to these women, will tell her story and share their goals. We will also be collecting straight knitting needles for her to take to the Brave Girls. So clean out your duplicates or purchase some new ones and bring them to the March meeting.

Peter and Betty Charles were on hand to demonstrate their finely crafted swifts and winders. It was fascinating to hear the origin story of their company, Oregon Woodworkers. Betty’s LYS asked him to fix and recreate a shop swift that was always breaking. Peter spent the next two years perfecting the design. Their swifts come in a variety of woods, set up and pack up easily, and are pretty enough to leave out all the time. Even better, there are zero wood on wood turning points, so our PNW humidity won’t wreak havoc on your yarn winding.​

Post meeting book list from Yvonne, in no particular order:

• Any book by Barbara Walker has to be in any knitters library
• A Year of Techniques by Arnall-Culliford Knitwear
• Knitting Pattern Essentials, Adapting and Drafting Knitting Pattern for Great Knitwear by   Sally Melville
• The Knitters Handbook by Montse Stanley
• Knitting in the Nordic Tradition by Vibeke Lind
• Color by Kristin - How to Design Your Own Beautiful Knits by Kristin Nicholas
• The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques by Margaret RadCliffe

And her latest purchase mentioned at the meeting:

• Knitting Details Start to Finish: A handbook of Simple Tricks, Creative Solutions and   Finishing Techniques Start to Finish by Ulla Engquist 

In her presentation, designer Debbi Stone of Stitches of My Life Designs discussed gauge: what is it, what determines it, and what is the role of gauge in the success of your final project. 

Like many beginning knitters, Debbi was never taught about gauge and how it can affect your knitted item, and this led to many project failures where things just didn’t fit right. Luckily, once you master gauge you can prevent these things from happening. 

Gauge is defined as the number of stitches per inch, in both stitches across (stitch gauge) and stitches vertically (row gauge). Gauge can be affected by the yarn, the needles, the knitting style, the knitter, and the situations of the day; therefore it’s important to always check gauge if you want your project to come out as expected. An additional consideration with gauge is the desired overall structure or drape of the finished fabric. Before making anything, Debbi recommends knitting a gauge swatch. If this matches the gauge listed in a pattern, then your project will match the design as written. If it doesn’t, it will not and you will need to make changes (different needles or yarn are the easiest things to switch out).

When swatching, you will be able to find out how you like the fabric, how the yarn looks, how the pattern or colorwork look, how the fabric flows/drapes and generally how you like it, in addition to the gauge you get. Some swatching tips Debbi had were to be sure to stick to the same situation as the pattern calls for as much as possible. For example, use the same yarn, and the same needles; if the pattern is knit in the round; knit the swatch in the round; swatch all of the knitted patterns you will be making in the project; and be sure to knit onto the full shaft of the needle (not just the tip of the needle) even though it’s a small swatch. By following these steps, you will get a swatch that is representative of the gauge you will get with the project. To make a useful swatch, Debbi suggests always including a garter edge so as to more easily see the edges of what you’ve made without curling. Finally, Debbi insists that if you don’t block your swatch, you shouldn’t even bother knitting it, as you will have no idea of what happens to the yarn/fabric once blocked. When blocking, she recommends following the ball band regarding temperature, but then simply laying out the swatch to dry (without pins) in order to see what it does naturally.

Thank you, Debbi!